Clive Jones

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this important debate. Thames Water’s assets are in urgent need of repair, and the company is swamped in over £17 billion of debt, which it cannot repay. Thames Water customers, like my constituents in Wokingham, are suffering as a result, with a third of our bills servicing the company’s debt—debt that did not improve services, but largely went towards paying dividends. In return, Thames Water’s customers have to put up with a company pumping raw sewage into our waterways. In Wokingham that means Thames Water is actively harming waterways like our beautiful River Loddon, parts of which are important chalk streams. I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) that water companies should never have been privatised. Sadly, my predecessor in Wokingham was one of the architects of the privatisation of water. The Government must allow Thames Water to go into special administration to ensure that much of its debt can be written off rather than continuing to burden residents, and put the company on a stable financial footing, allowing it to update leaking pipes and reduce the huge amount of raw sewage that it pumps into our rivers. My residents in Wokingham and the environment just cannot afford for Thames Water to continue in its current state.